New video answers common questions about vision therapy

One of the major obstacles in public awareness of Convergence Insufficiency is that this condition is clearly not a household word. Parents whose school-age child is newly diagnosed with CI frequently will ask, “Why did no one recognize this in my child earlier?” 

To address this  common question, our office has produced a video, entitled: Looking Inward: The Vision Therapy Treatment of Convergence Insufficiency  to help bring about a better understanding for diagnosis and effective treatment of this common and yet potentially disabling binocular vision problem...Convergence Insufficiency. 

Comments

[Amber]

One of the questions I get from other parents is about the lack of controlled trials for VT outside of convergence insufficiency. Indeed, there does seem to be a lack of research "proving" that VT works. It's not that there are studies saying it doesn't, but more that there just isn't enough research out there backing it up and therefore opthalmology can continue to say it's not "evidence-based." I know VT works and find this frustrating. Can you explain why the paucity of gold-standard research exists? Thank you.

[The Wow Vision Therapy Blog]

Thank you Amber for your thoughtful comment and question. Actually, there is a plethora of good research that proves that vision therapy is effective. For a good article that addresses this question that also includes links to authoritative sites, The VisionHelp Group posted on their website, The Snake Oil Myth: http://www.visionfactsandfallacies.com/

The "gold standard" you mentioned, is when the research is double blind, prospective, multicenter and randomized. And yes, the CITT Study on Convergence Insufficiency met that "gold standard". It also was the culmination of 10 years of preliminary research that set the stage for the major study, funded by NIH and the National Eye Institute for over $6.1 million. The study, published in the American Medical Associations journal, Archives of Ophthalmology in October 2008 proved that office-based vision therapy was effective in the treatment of Convergence Insufficiency and that home-based computer programs done alone and/or pencil pushup activities are not effective.

So, why is there not more examples of the model used for the CITT Study on Convergence Insufficiency? A project of the CITT magnitude take years and since they are not funded by drug companies, it takes private and public funding to bring to fruition.

But, even though the "gold standard" is the example of the highest level of scientific validation, it is not to suggest that good research does not exist to show efficacy of vision, when in fact it does. One good source on the efficacy of office-based vision therapy is at the College of Optometrists in Vision Development:
http://covd.org/Home/ResearchWhitePapers/ResearchonVisionTherapy/tabid/189/Default.aspx